2024 Hometown HEROES Magazine LINCOLN DAILY NEWS June/July 2024 Page 23 Chuck Fricke shares the stories his dad never told him Armin Ernst Fricke was the eldest son of John Henry Fricke, an immigrant from Osnebrocht Germany. John Henry, age 17, fled Germany in 1904 landing at Ellis Island, New York, with his two brothers William 15, and Henry age 14. It was at this time that Kaiser Wilhelm II, the last German Emperor and King of Prussia was raising an army for Germany prior to WW I. In 1917 John Henry was drafted into the U.S. Army, but WW I came to an end before he left the farm in Meredosia, Illinois. How ironic! Armin graduated mortuary school in the fall of 1941 and enlisted in the army, as did millions on December 8, 1941. With his medical and mortuary knowledge, speaking and writing knowledge of the German language he was immediately a candidate for becoming an Army medic. His two younger brothers also joined the military in WW II and his fourth brother served in Korea in 1952. A true Band of Brothers! Armin became a member of the 232 Medical Battalion, 125th Regiment, and the 34th (Red Bull) Division. He was sent to Africa, on June 1943 upon the USS Chateau Thierry arriving in Oran French Algeria Africa. It was at this same time that Generals Omar Bradley and George Patton were chasing General and Field Marshall Erwin Rommel (Desert Fox) across Northern Africa thru Tunisia. The Red Bull Division was the first division deployed to Europe and became the most decorated and longest serving division on front line duty serving 517 straight combat days. During his deployment , my father started a journal with three to four sentences per day as well as taking pictures with his Brownie camera. That diary contains an infantryman’s account and experiences through some of the worst days of a 26-year-old farm boy’s life. He took pictures of the losses at the Lion Mt. cemetery south of Oran in Tunisia Africa after Hill 609. Later Armin’s deployment took him in landing crafts into Sicily through Palermo and Messina, under General George Patton and then the landing into Italy itself under General Clark. After the surrender of Italy and the beginning retreat of the German Army under the command of Field Marshall Albert Kesselring, which was later convicted of War crimes, the German army stripped the countryside of
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